I got talking to RR about how do the 91 parts of the Earth work. Honestly, I’ve been poking around Syria to see what’s going on. The Magical Current is pretty swift like a river. I wasn’t going to publish notes (yet) but since he seemed interested and I figure the readers might be interested in current events, here’s the rough-out of how I poke around. (This also means I haven’t been doing the stuff he asked, but I’ll have to come back to that).
Firstly, I use Stenwicks Heptarchy book. Working with it (and I realize I’ve been poor about publishing notes, but thats also because the work is intensely personal) usually produces two things: A vision of a throne room and a vision of a spirit who is the authority. It also, curiously, sometimes produces other spirits which give audience to the king, but they rarely identify themselves and they’re always inferior to the authority (king, etc) present. I’ve been doing this enough that I recognize this as a “staple” vision, sort of like how every Orthodox Church looks the same. The King colors the actions, so all the normal rules about days and hours apply. But, the King can also summon the spirit. Once I have the Throne and the King, I ask to see The Ruler of the region. Confused? Ben Rowe has an entirely different take on this and tries to keep it closer to what Dee would have done (or he suspects Dee did).
Why change it up? Magic is a two way street. “We see them, they see us”. The HGA is conspicuously absent for a lot of these operations, but I generally take this to mean “You don’t need adult supervision” and not “I withdrawal my support”. If I call upon the Kings first whom I have a familiar relationship with, they act like a broker between me and the spiritual forces. Or, more simply put, I don’t want Syria inside my sphere. It’s OK to hack on the system so long as you get why you’re doing it. Poke talks about this a bit in his podcast, and perspective matters. It is my opinion that Crowley changes the associations of the Star in his deck because he’s looking to govern forces he’s already contacted. Similarly, I want to use the King to govern the force as it reaches me, and extend it’s influence over events. And, like everything else in Enochian, since everything is tied together and parts of something else, stretching the system a bit still works. When people ask “Should I get into Enochian?” I usually ask them how they feel about legos.
Again, to contrast with Ben and his method, the spirit is given a place in the celestial kingdom (zodiac), a spirit or angel which rules over it, and then a place (aethyr) and a mundane rulership (Syria). If I call on a Heptarchial King, they have a prince (spirit they rule over), a throne room (aethyr?), a day of the week (zodiacial kingdom?), etc. This is not Dee cannon, but it lines up nicely enough I’ve been running with it and producing decent if weirdly mixed results. Additionally, I suspect the Heptarchy has a passing hat tip to the Heptarchy of England, and doesn’t limit itself to “day of the week”. This idea isn’t that much of a leap if the 12 tribes of judea are the 12 houses of the zodiac… Remember, Dee was constantly looking for magical knowledge and how to influence politics in magic.
7 kings surrounded by 12 ensigns means…
Stealing a bit of a tip from Stenwick’s book, I produced the seal appropriate for the day and then put the seal of the region (PASCOMB) under that and stood on them. Again, this is not Dee cannon, this is me screwing around. I followed the general ritual form laid out previously. Once I had King Babalel (day and hour of Mars), I requested PASCOMB.
Babalel itself appeared as a bright, bright flame on a very dark red throne. It never assumed the shape of a person. Around it was the checkerboard floor, and the throne sat on a platform which three steps look up to. The columns looked like a reddish cave, almost like someone had designed a throne room out of a cave and rather than hewn stone, had used the natural features of the cave itself. When I requested the presence of PASCOMB, a river ran through the floor. This wasn’t a particularly clean vision, it was almost a weird sense of being two places at once. Note that I did not call Zinggen, and only used the authority of Babalel. This is actually congruous with Ben’s notes, so I’m not sure if this is the ‘correct’ version of this vision or if I’m making too large a leap into how the system works. I then asked PASCOMB to see Syria. I sort of expected to be taken on a tour through space, but instead the spirits just sort of rearranged the present presentation to fit their needs. The throne room was rent open and the columns became piles of bricks, trees, and a road. There’s clearly Layers of Things here, but it’s starting to look like a parking garage where the columns have been painted to look like trees. Perhaps most troubling, there’s now Boats from Saturn moving down the river. The boats, I recently realized, are the shades (the corpses of intelligence) which we leave behind when we leave our bodies. Levi is fairly specific about this topic and he writes that each man leaves two corpses behind. The boats are the intelligent corpse.
“A SENSE.” (Or “BEHOLD”, I don’t recall other than a command to attention).
The river turns silver like mercury and I could almost feel the sackcloth robe of Saturn around. I almost felt an acknowledgement from Saturn in the background, there was definitely a “go ask him” effect. Each side of the river has a mold creep over it, and each mold makes a fog. Out of the fog flow boats. Two skeletal kings with broken crowns point swords at each other, but the swords are broken. Both discard the swords and point at one another, and where their fingertips touch over the river, the bones are fluid and melt into one another. The banks of the river recoil, and stretch apart. The bodies of the kings fall, and where they fall, new land is formed. But the new land doesn’t match the old land, they don’t fit together.
Things dim, I am left with a vision of the flame in the darkness. I thank the spirit and dismiss it, and the flame goes out.
If I had to make a call, I would almost think we end up with New Syria and Old Syria or something like that.